Tennessee Concealed Carry Permit

Tennessee has no statute criminalizing the manufacture or assembly of a firearm for personal use by a non-prohibited person, no state firearm registration, and no general state requirement that a self-made firearm bear a serial number. I found no Tennessee 'ghost gun' / unfinished-frame-or-receiver serialization law. The Tennessee Firearms Freedom Act affirmatively contemplates private manufacture: '[a] personal firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition that is manufactured commercially or privately in Tennessee and that remains within the borders of Tennessee is not subject to federal law or federal regulation, including registration.' 'Manufactured' is defined as 'creating a firearm... from basic materials for functional usefulness, including but not limited to forging, casting, machining, or other processes for working materials.' TWO QUALIFIERS. (1) There IS a marking requirement, but only for firearms claiming the Act's exemption: 'A firearm manufactured or sold in Tennessee under this chapter must have the words "Made in Tennessee" clearly stamped on a central metallic part, such as the receiver or frame.' That is a state-of-origin stamp, not a serial number. The Act does not apply to a firearm that cannot be carried and used by one person, a firearm with a bore over 1.5 inches using smokeless powder, exploding-projectile ammunition, or a firearm that discharges two or more projectiles with one trigger activation. (2) THE ACT'S CORE CLAIM IS NOT GOOD LAW AGAINST THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. Federal courts have rejected identical Firearms Freedom Acts from other states; the Gun Control Act, the National Firearms Act, and current ATF frame-and-receiver rules continue to apply in Tennessee regardless of the Act's declaration. Do not rely on it as a defense to a federal charge. Building a machine gun, short-barreled rifle or shotgun, or suppressor remains governed by federal law and by T.C.A. § 39-17-1302, and manufacturing for sale or transfer can trigger federal manufacturer/dealer licensing and serialization duties.

Tennessee Firearms Freedom Act, T.C.A. Title 4, Chapter 54 (enacted 2009 by HB 1796 / SB 1610); see also T.C.A. § 39-17-1302 (prohibited weapons)

Federal law, gunsmithing schools, and tools →

What we could not confirm

• RESOLVED THIS RUN, and the resolution reverses the prior answer. The permitless-carry age in T.C.A. § 39-17-1307(g)(1)(A) is twenty-one, or eighteen for a person with the qualifying military service described in (g)(1)(B). That is the enacted text of 2021 Public Chapter 108 as signed, read from the Secretary of State's copy, and no public act of the 112th, 113th or 114th General Assembly (2021 through the 2026 session) has amended it. The prior version of this record reported 18 because it quoted the AS-INTRODUCED SB 765, whose different wording was amended out before passage.
• WHAT REMAINS OPEN, and it is the most consequential item in this record: whether a non-military 18-20 year old can in practice carry without a permit. The Beeler settlement (E.D. Tenn. No. 3:21-cv-152) was approved by the court only for the purpose of retaining ancillary jurisdiction, and the proposed injunction was never entered, so no court order bars enforcement of the age-21 floor. The operative 'Settlement Agreement and Release of Liability' is filed as a scanned exhibit (Doc. 50-1) with no extractable text and no OCR was available, so I could not read what the Commissioner actually promised. News coverage reports a non-prosecution commitment, but that is not a primary source, and the Commissioner does not charge § 39-17-1307(a) offenses — local district attorneys general do, and they were not parties to the settlement. An 18-20 year old should obtain a permit (available at 18) rather than rely on permitless carry, and should consult counsel before doing otherwise.
• I still could not read a consolidated, current codified Tennessee Code. The state's official publisher (lexisnexis.com/hottopics/tncode) redirects to a JavaScript Lexis Advance container that cannot be fetched, sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com returns HTTP 403 for all act paths, and law.justia.com returns HTTP 403 to this client. Every statutory quotation here therefore comes from signed Public Chapter PDFs on publications.tnsosfiles.com plus TDOSHS's own verbatim quotations. That method is reliable for text traced to a specific act, but it cannot prove the absence of an amendment in a section I did not trace; I mitigated this by searching the Secretary of State's complete Public Acts indexes for the 112th, 113th and 114th General Assemblies for every firearm, handgun and weapon act.
• 2025 Public Chapter 356 amended only § 39-17-1351. It did not amend § 39-17-1366(b)(3), the concealed-permit provision whose age threshold the Beeler plaintiffs also challenged, and I could not read that subsection's current text. For the Concealed permit, age 18 rests on TDOSHS's published eligibility rules rather than on statutory text I verified.
• Whether Tennessee's recognition of a permit 'issued by another state' under § 39-17-1351(r)(1) extends to the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico or other U.S. territories. Not addressed on the official page, so DC and PR are excluded from the honors array rather than assumed. D.C. does appear on the separate new-resident training-waiver list, which is not a recognition statement. (The subsection letter itself, an open question in the prior version, is now resolved: TDOSHS cites § 39-17-1351(r)(1).)
• Processing time is genuinely unpublished — TDOSHS gives no estimate on its landing, permit-types, apply, FAQ or online-services pages. Do not substitute a figure from a secondary source.
• training.liveFireRequired is null because the answer differs by permit type, not because it is unknown: live fire is required for the Enhanced permit (confirmed by § 39-17-1351(e)(4) and (y) as quoted by TDOSHS) and is not required for the Concealed permit. TDOSHS does not publish how many of the Enhanced permit's 8 hours are range time.
• Non-resident permits: TDOSHS's How To Apply page documents a 'Non-Resident Enhanced Handgun Carry Permit' requiring a current valid permit from the state of residence plus proof of Tennessee employment of at least 30 hours per week for at least 6 consecutive months. This is an employment-based exception, not an open non-resident permit — a non-resident with no Tennessee employment cannot obtain one. I could not verify which subdivision of § 39-17-1351 creates it; § 39-17-1351(b) is now prefaced 'Except as provided in subsection (r)', which points to (r), but I did not read that subdivision.
• Instructor/school registry: Tennessee publishes no single public searchable registry. Certified Enhanced handgun safety schools are listed only inside the e-Services portal at https://dl.safety.tn.gov/_/, while the public locate.html page carries static tables of approved online Concealed vendors (14 listed today) and in-person concealed schools (5 listed today) under § 39-17-1366(k)(3). The URL given is the best official public entry point, not a true registry.
• Home manufacture rests partly on the absence of a prohibiting statute, which cannot be proven exhaustively. I found no Tennessee serialization or unfinished-receiver law, and no such act appears among the firearm-related public chapters of the 113th or 114th General Assemblies, but I could not read the codified Title 39, Chapter 17, Part 13 in full.
• The Tennessee Firearms Freedom Act text quoted in homeManufacture comes from the 2009 HB 1796 AS INTRODUCED. Since exactly this mistake produced the permitless-carry age error in the prior version of this record, treat that quotation with suspicion: the 106th General Assembly's public acts are not served by the Secretary of State export that covers later assemblies, so I could not compare the introduced bill against the enacted chapter or confirm the codified section numbers in T.C.A. Title 4, Chapter 54.
• Local ordinances and posted-premises rules (§ 39-17-1359) were not surveyed and can restrict carry that is otherwise lawful statewide. Note also 2026 Public Chapter 919, under which a sheriff may provide free storage lockers at a county courthouse where carry is restricted, and 2026 Public Chapter 1141, which revised the judges' exemption in § 39-17-1306(c)(3) effective July 1, 2026.